For my thirteenth Christmas, my parents gave me a copy of travel writer Richard Halliburton’s Complete Book of Marvels which ignited my young imagination like nothing before or since. I was gobsmacked by Halliburton’s global exploits and stunning photography, not to mention a man daring (or foolish) enough to scale the Matterhorn off-season, leap 70 feet into the Mayan sacrificial pool at Chichen Itza and swim the Panama Canal! Such derring-do made headlines around the world and had special resonance because Halliburton, like myself, was a native Tennessean. His tantalizing adventures transported me to worlds well beyond my backyard and set me on a path continuing to this day. Born into a well-to-do Memphis family in 1900, Halliburton took a hiatus...